Diane Lane biography 2022
Diane Lane biography
Diane Lane was born in New York City on January 22, 1965, to acting coach father Burt Lane and center fielder Colleen Farrington.
With these two parents, it was almost genetically inevitable that Diane would possess a mixture of acting skills and good looks. Of course, she had to grow into the last two traits.
The acting ability came almost as soon as she was born, and by the age of six, Diane had made her stage debut in acclaimed theater director Andrei Serbian's Medea. Her performance captivated Serbian, so he continued casting her in his productions for the next five years.
In 1976, Diane Lane's reputation as a talented and accomplished child star landed her in Joseph Papp's productions of The Cherry Orchard and Agamemnon at Lincoln Center in New York.
Performing in such a posh venue meant her reviews would be read across the US, especially in Hollywood. Film director George Roy Hill cast the young Diane Lane to star opposite Sir Lawrence Olivier in his 1978 feature A Little Romance. Despite the film's critical praise, its box office success was mediocre.
But Olivier was vocal in interviews about what a great actress his young co-star was. He even went so far as to call her the new Grace Kelly. All this media hype placed Diane on the cover of Time in August 1979 at the age of fourteen. Expectations were high for Diane Lane's follow-up projects, and none of them lived up to their promise.
Touched by Love (1980), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), National Lampoon Goes to the Movies (1981), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981), and Six Pack (1982) were all hits.
As the luster of her star faded, Diane Lane began to take on roles with smaller paychecks and more significant opportunities to grow as an actress. Roles in two Francis Ford Coppola films, Rumble Fish (1983) and The Outsiders (1983), proved that Diane Lane was more than capable of taking on adult roles, and once again, she was trendy property.
Coppola admitted that she had always had a crush on her, even when she was a young actress. When studio executives fell over themselves to offer Diane Lane a multi-picture deal, she was offered the lead role in three major Hollywood epics.
Perhaps in an attempt to exercise some of the judgment she lacked as a child actor, she passed on the first image. The film seemed destined for failure on paper: "a story about a mermaid out of the water" starring an unknown TV actor.
Unfortunately for Diane, the movie was the smash hit Splash, and the actor she passed on was Tom Hanks. The films she accepted were Streets of Fire (1984) and The Cotton Club (1984), both high-budget, high-profile failures. Diane Lane spent the next three years in self-imposed exile from acting and returned to the picture, The Big Town (1987).
The film served as the formal beginning of her comeback, but it wasn't until 1989's Lonesome Dove that America welcomed her back as a star. Her role as Lorena Wood, the whore with a heart of gold, in the epic miniseries earned her an Emmy nomination and another stint as a hot commodity among movie producers. However, this time she was wanted in a supporting role rather than a leading lady.
Desperate to avoid another fall from grace, Diane Lane chose minor roles in films such as 1992's Chaplin and 1993's Indian Summer. Since 1995, Diane began working in big-budget films such as Judge Dredd (1995), the Robin Williams vehicle Jack (1996), and Murder at 1600 (1997).
Although the films were all reasonably successful, none of them made Diane a household name. The string of films that helped makes Diane Lane a big star began with her performance as an unfaithful 1960s housewife in A Walk on the Moon (1999).
That role may have won her industry acclaim, but her role in the $600 million-plus grossing blockbuster A Perfect Storm also brought her back to the public eye, starring George Clooney. Since the film's runaway success, Diane has starred in The Glass House (2001) and the blockbuster Hardball, both of which opened on the same day in 2001.
Despite the success of these two films, her role in the thriller Unfaithful (2002) seems to be the defining moment of her career. The film topped the box office, and there are rumblings of a possible Oscar nomination for Lane's turn as Richard Gere's unfaithful wife. It seems that after twenty years of success, Diane Lane is fulfilling the prophecy that Time printed for her back in August of 1979.
As for her personal life, she has a daughter, Eleanor, with her ex-husband, Christopher Lambert.
last updated October 2022
